Czech company discloses that RL-3DM radar is nearing end of development
Speaking to MONCh during the DSA 2018 exhibition being held in Kuala Lumpur this week, officials from Retia revealed that the firm’s new RL-3DM S-band (2.3 gigahertz/GHz to 2.5GHz/2.7GHz to 3.7GHz) three-dimensional (velocity, speed and azimuth) ground-based air surveillance radar is nearing the end of development.
“We are just finishing development,” company officials told MONCh. “The project is ready and we have a functioning demonstrator.”
Using an active electronically scanned array, with an instrumented range of up to 64.7 nautical miles (150 kilometres/km) and altitude coverage of almost 60,000 feet (18,000 metres) the radar can perform both general ground-based air surveillance along with fire control for air defence weapons such as Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAMs) or anti-aircraft artillery. That said, the firm articulated that the radar does not include an integral radio frequency uplink to provide course correction updates for semi-active radar homing SAMs.
The full development of the radar, the officials continued, now depends on the firm securing an order from a customer to provide funding to this end. Moreover, this will allow the radar to be tailored to the customer’s requirements. For example, although the radar uses the ASTERIX (All Purpose Structured Eurocontrol Surveillance Information Exchange) output protocol to share its radar picture, the company stated that different, or additional, protocols can be accommodated as per customer request.
Thomas Withington
